Following on from the above, it is worrying that one of the
exact areas where drivers are prone to speed up (sensing they have
been held up in the very centre of the village) is where the
children are crossing the road for school from the village shop car
park. There have been many “close shaves” brought to my
knowledge in the past c.15 months since I took a role on the school
PTA. Furthermore, many parents of children who walk to school have
voiced their concerns due to numerous incidents of school bags
being hit by passing cars - an unpleasant experience which gets
ever more frequent as cars on our roads become larger. There have
been at least two incidents in the past 6 months of cars crashed
into the hedge going out of the village in the Fordcombe direction.
Thankfully these accidents did not happen in daylight hours but it
would have been utterly appalling if any pedestrian - child or
adult - had been caught up in one of these as an innocent
bystander. The “Crashmap” available on the KCC website
shows that a total of six slight or serious incidents have taken
place in the close vicinity of the village centre within the last 6
years (three on the B2188 which is the road in/out of the village
from Fordcombe direction, one on the Penshurst Road out towards
Leigh and two on Rogues Hill going towards Tonbridge). Thank
goodness none of these resulted in a fatality but it seems a high
number of incidents indeed for a small village to have suffered. It
would be a devastation were the worst case scenario to play out,
especially when there was scope for downgrading the chance of it
happening by reducing the speed limit through the village.
We would note that a number of other local areas, with seemingly
less need to do so, now have 20 mph limits in place. There is much
speculation that the council will only reduce speed limits once the
“worst case scenario” has occurred but we would trust
this is not in fact the method utilised to make these kind of
decisions.
This ePetition ran from 06/01/2023 to 17/04/2023 and has now finished.
101 people signed this ePetition.